Debt Rattle October 23 2026
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Paul Cézanne Curtains 1885 • US Evacuating Middle East Bases As Trump Weighs New Iran Strikes – NBC (RT) • Ilhan Omar Can’t Quite Rule Out Marrying He
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle October 23 2026]“French Police Identify Antifa As The “Ideologically Distinct Group” Behind The Riots Despite Democratic Denials
But “There’s no such thing as Antifa tho” although they have meetings, organizers, bank accounts, phone lists…billionaire oligarchic funders…
Wow. That’s tough to take…. Hahaha.
Since we knew this whole thing was a setup — they have no trouble stopping any riots, being a national sport, and stopped the Right or the Gilet Jaunes daily for years — it’s WHY are they doing it? Well, to collapse the government and change the rules, so Tiny Jupiter needs to buy an excuse. Which will outlaw any remaining French rights. Right. But it’s never one thing. Why THIS one. School funding? Because it’s not. CLEARLY.
He needs to steal the Pensions. It’s always to steal the pensions, that’s the only thing governments think about from dawn to dusk is screwing the people, and getting that big pot of money they haven’t stolen yet, called the Pensions. Just last week her highness DerLyin’ said “That EU People’s money is doing nothing” (this is a lie, all ‘money’ is already doing something) so she needed to steal it. A week later, Macron has to “Calm down the students” and the “Young people” by…..you guessed it! Giving them stuff. They already said a free education, promising lower standards than ever, so the degree with also be worthless! But we take FROM the Olds, and TO the Youngs, right? Where 99% of it ends up with Macron, the EU, and Ukraine.
Tah-dah! You’re welcome. European budget collapse averted, Millions of olds killed achieved.
Ilhan Omar: “Maybe I married my brother. IDK. May delete later.”
“”Gotten Too Old Not To Be Greedy”: Virginia State Sen. Arrested, Accused Of Masterminding $4.5 Million Criminal Drug Enterprise
Aaaaaaand guess which party. Another fine Amish fellow. Nobody knewd nuffin’ before now.
“New Migrant Caravan Heads North Through Mexico Hoping For Democratic Midterm Victory
Surely the GOP pays for this. There is no better advertising for the midterms.
“Top Trump Envoy Declares Kinetic Action In Yemen Would Be ‘Fruitless’
“These kinetic reactions have never worked. It doesn’t work.”War doesn’t work to change behavior. Wow, first I’ve heard of it: I guess all violence over all time was counterproductive: no one was conquered, actually.
Quick: someone tell France.
USDX almost 103. Looks like to go to previous high, 115. What would that make Canada? 60c? Btw, CAD is being bulwarked at .70. Breaking that was intraday. I wonder how much they’ve lost so far rigging it to 70c.
Remains to be seen, there are a LOT of moving parts. Highest is: Europe collapses completely and hits the world with a financial contagion. But every hour we re-industrialize makes that less likely.
“”High Likelihood Of Error”: Judge Halts DHS Voter-Fraud Door-Knocks In Nine States
Judge says the government can’t knock on your door. So everyone on the planet EXCEPT law enforcement, to ask normal questions (Which you can also refuse). Will he rule ICE can no longer breathe air? Stay tuned…. They can use Flock Cameras worldwide with no warrant, but can’t knock on your door because: Privacy, warrants.
“California Officials Blame ‘Vendor Error’ For Sending Thousands Of Duplicate Ballots
That thing that never happens happened a few thousand more times again. The judges aren’t bothered by this at all and make no rulings to desist.
“Florida Mayor Charged With Grand Theft From COVID Relief Program She Helped Create
Guess which party? And so guess which newspapers neglected to add her party affiliation on every news story, which is considered standard form? (A: All of them. Of course. Lookin’ at you, NYTimes) Suddenly can’t remember the thing we remembered yesterday! …I actually looked it up hoping it would be Republicans arresting Republicans, too bad.
“”THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: ‘More Oil Is Now Coming Out of the Persian Gulf Than Before the Iran War.'”
Is it really though? Well, close enough.
“Neil Oliver argues that war gives governments the PERFECT EXCUSE to print money, expand their powers, declare states of emergency,” — Nawfal
THE WAR WILL START THIS WEEKEND — Nawfal Okay, you’ll pay me $500 if it doesn’t. You’ll leave the internet? Take a retraction and walk of shame?
“• US Evacuating Middle East Bases As Trump Weighs New Iran Strikes – NBC (RT)
Do we HAVE any bases left?
“” If they had their way, the Democrats would hand the average family of four a $1,700 tax increase. That’s on top of the cost of everything that families need to live their lives.”C’mon, that’s ridiculous! They’re the Party of the Working Class. (Checks every Blue location on earth, Baltimore, Chicago, Massachusetts, California, Canada, Europe…) Oh. Right. Gas prices $10 in “Worker’s Paradise CA” and $5 elsewhere. Helpin’ the little guy. With RELENTLESSLY higher prices and taxes.
“ Sixteen years ago, black people voted 95% Democrat. By 2020, 77% of black adults identified as Democrats. And in 2023, the number fell to just 66%.”
Why do Democrats hate Black people so much? Or vice-versa?
“ Dr. Jerome Corsi, who has a Harvard PhD in political science,” uh-oh.
“ “We now have a data base that can track every registered voter in the United States and every mail-in ballot in the United States. . .. We can run this by 25 different indices such as tax records, post office moving records to really know who these people are. The data base even permits you to click through to Google maps to see property from which the person registered.”
However, every Federal Judge says the government can’t use the government’s own records, but the private world can. Government people must never use government records to do government work. Hmmmm…
“No country in the world has done more to help Ukraine over the last four and a half years than the United States, including under the Trump Administration, and that continues to be the case.”
Fill me in here Marco…
Shocking haranguing, Rubio answers the question very clearly, far clearer than the reporter asked it, and the reporter keeps trying to re-phrase in a way he can get a false quote. You’re fired. Why? One, you’re pissing everyone off, and we need people we interview to be on good terms and think well of the Paper, second, We’ll have to RETRACT it when you’re wrong, you dope, and make the Paper look stupid. That’s not good for circulation. And you wasted everyone’s time like a child.
Time is money. Column inches are money. So STFU.
“The Dems still deny Antifa exists. It’s easier that way.”
See, normal people don’t act this way. They say, if a Bank is robbed, then a bank robber exists. Who DOES say that, then? A: The Bank Robber. That’s the only one. And you can go to his meetings and he’ll tell you anyway, so…
“Now, French authorities identified Antifa as the largest of three “ideologically distinct groups” responsible for the violence in France.”
That’s super-odd, because I’ve been made to understand that Antifa is on the LEFT. I know they’re probably centrists in France, but still…
So it appears the Far-LEFT is the source of most political (and criminal) violence. (Check crime rates of every Blue State, City, zip code, and voter)
But it does make sense that all of them are hyper-authoritarians and anti Free speech. That’s not “Anarchism”, because then you couldn’t enforce your dislike for speech. They’re just using it as a ruse, which you see almost ceaselessly with this crew, and we’re supposed to not notice. I did notice you’re a pack of liars, actually. Surprise.
“Republicans support laws deeming all criticism of a certain foreign government to be “anti-semitism” and therefore “hate speech.”
Yes. They do. And we need to fight them into a graveyard on this.
““Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever has blocked an EU proposal to confiscate Russian sovereign assets to fund Ukraine.”
What if they weren’t allowed to discuss this and say no because no free speech?
“The outcome will determine whether t…Trump’s presidency is at an end.” –PCR
Apparently Paul lives under a different Constitution than I do? That’s okay, he’s still young. After reading a few Wikipedia articles he’ll learn what a President is and how he’s elected.
He also disagrees that any oil is moving. Paul, if the oil isn’t moving for 230 days, why hasn’t someone run out? Instead we have adequate oil which is only stopped by firebombing refineries. …Which ALSO isn’t enough to cause shortages. Explain? Because that combo makes it sure seem like there’s a LOT of oil out there. How often can you bomb 5 Fri-to-Lay factories and not have a shortage of chips? This means nothing because Paul has feels.
“The outcome will determine whether the Democrats control Congress, or enough of it, that Trump’s presidency is at an end.” –PCR
And this “helping” is causing Israel to cease to exist. Especially their lobby here. Odd: that seems somewhat counterproductive. Sign me up. Also Israel is an ally of the U.S. but ALSO a key ally of the most hardened Muslim state on planet earth: Saudi Arabia? Owner of Mecca and Medina? Discuss? Whichever way you want to resolve this is fine with me, but certainly something needs to be wildly re-defined here. I mean, do you want to say Israel is a hyper PRO-Islamic state? Or that Saudi Arabia is a Jewish National state? Or what?
“her husband, Doug Emhoff, reportedly isn’t thrilled about her running again.”
He just said she wasn’t. Again, I think the Republicans are paying her to do this, and paying caravans to march to the border. Any paying Mamdani and Sayed. There’s nothing better than this.
“He argued that discarding God led to a moral chaos where “everything is permitted.”
“Conscience without God is a terrible thing; it can stray into the depths of immorality”Men need a yardstick outside themselves or they cannot be moral at all. That’s not even a failing, that’s just how logic and the human mind work. And so with Dot here, the John Adams quote “Suited to a moral people and would fail for all others.” He was already pointing out that Western Europe, without God, can’t be Humanists. They’d be mass-murderers and monsters. That’s not the strange part. The part I’m annoyed with is, they did this for 150 years in a row and no one seems able to learn. When I say it again and point to 150 years in a row of history, I’m the idiot.
“Employs 150,000+ people
Has made tens of thousands of people Millionaires
Has saved FREE SPEECH
Helped Bankrupt and abolish USAID
Exposed how corrupt the system really is
That’s why Democrats hate himNote what else: We on the Right still constantly criticize him, as we do Trump. He’s not exempt, and not a cult. It’s far more common to say “Yes, but” than to just say his good things.
Jimmy Dore: Yes we said any nightclub comedian high at 9am already knew the outcome of the Ukraine war when only 10k people were dead. But Congress is way, way dumber than even that. Or about 1,999,000 murders more evil.
Btw, Ze can give the 25%, but they’ll put NATO in Kiev, so no. Russia will veto that. And Europe will financially collapse.
As usual, I agree with most of what Krainer says, and also including his thing on Socialism – a bit tangled here, but he’s often said Socialism in Yugoslavia was as well-working a system as all the rest, and he’s right. Strangely no one takes that line on debate, but all the other lines that don’t work. He’s saying any unit that 1) Can vote OR 2) can print, will do so, and there’s no exception in history, basically. Yup. Bankers know it, and used it since the Middle Ages, but let’s say since 1600.
“Network topology doesn’t fit neatly into a news segment. The finding also cuts against the story we tell ourselves about free markets and fair competition.”
Who says this? I can’t swing a cat without hearing criticisms of (Fake) Capitalism. I don’t even think you could read only the WSJ or something. There is no subset of any nation on earth where you’d hear “We have Free Markets and fair competition.” …Perhaps because the speaker would choke laughing.
People have been complaining this was false since before FDR was a child.
This study has come out many, many times – remember Carter’s study that the People have zero influence on policy because Corporations have it? However, it hasn’t been internalized so I guess it needs to keep coming out. BTW that Hydra they point at is “The Globalists” I speak of, they are the Nazi organization, I personally believe originally seeded with Nazi money/gold post WWII, or at least this iteration of it. Prove me wrong.
So THAT’S what happened!
Ilhan Omar is forty four years of age, has been in Congress for seven years.
Naturalized at seventeen that equates to twenty seven years in the US.
I am being led to believe that an armed forces officer from Somalia immigrated into the United States as the ten year horror of the Somali Civil war had reached peak atrocity without protection of The US State Department. Walked through customs with a non expiring visa and settled comfortably in Minnesota. No mention of Federal Income tax records or Social Security status? Record of employment?
You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink.” Did Musk and Trump discuss Kiev’s Starlink?
I’m sure they did.
It puts the US inside the war. It shouldn’t be.
How can you talk peace with Putin if you support Kiev?”
You cannot, and you are not.“It puts the US inside the war. It shouldn’t be.”
The Eighth Circle of Hell is reserved for Fraud. Is the hand on the pen that produced the sentence immediately above headed for the 6th bolgia or the 8th?“ELON MUSK: “What I’ve learned is that legacy media propaganda is very effective at making you believe things that aren’t true.”
The man speaks with the voice of experience.
Two can play at irony.How about some Gerald Celente clips to round out the discussion?
A Republic Has to See
A republic rests on one rule: the people can see who holds the power. That’s why we make our laws in public and try our cases in open court. Yet faceless entities are taking over the economy one merger and one acquisition at a time, and the law lets them stay unseen. Nobody voted for it. Nobody was asked. Each deal leaves fewer hands on the controls, and the owners behind those hands get harder to find. Choice is the first freedom to go. When the same few names sit behind rival firms, a worker or a customer has nowhere else to turn, and the decisions that shape a life get made in rooms no citizen can enter. Bring back charters that end on a set date. Make every large owner put its real owners on the public record. Our children will inherit whatever we allow now, and a country can’t govern what it isn’t allowed to see. The map exists. Now the owners behind it have to step into view.***
Eric Daniel Buesing is an independent researcher and the author of The Hidden Hand: Wealth, Power, and Control from Pharaohs to Corporations(TrineDay, 2026) and The Illusion Architects: How Elites Shape Culture, Consciousness, and Reality (TrineDay, 2027). For 22 years he has studied elite power structures, mapping the architectures of influence that govern societies, economies, and global institutions, work that builds on the foundations laid by Carroll Quigley and Antony Sutton. A former licensed private investigator and expert witness with an MBA and specialized expertise in voice stress analysis, he brings an investigator’s discipline to the historical record. His work challenges mainstream narratives and invites readers to look more closely at the systems that shape their world.
Why the US Can Never Match Chinese Shipbuilding
Brian Berletic, October 17, 2026
America’s $66 billion plan to “beat China’s shipbuilding empire” is not a strategy but an admission of systemic deadlock: unable to compete directly, the US is turning to asymmetric sabotage.In a recent Business Insider article and accompanying video regarding the US’ $66 billion plan to “beat China’s shipbuilding empire,” it is revealed that US plans ultimately amount to unlikely solutions to what are deep, systemic problems with little political appetite to face, let alone address — a microcosm of the US’ wider terminal decline relative to the emerging multipolar world.
In the video, an American shipyard worker is seen wearing a helmet with a sticker saying, “Go Navy, Beat China,” China — a nation that has never attacked the United States — and instead has been subject to US encroachment, occupation, and war both before and after the World Wars — exemplifying the delusional belligerence US interests encourage among the American public and specifically those among the US military and across its military industrial base.Detached even further from reality is the notion of the US “beating China” in the realm of shipbuilding where China is reported to build between 1,000 to 1,700 ships a year while the US builds ships in single digit numbers.
The fact the US continues seeking the means to reassert its primacy worldwide, especially against China, is not evidence necessarily that the US can succeed — but that through its efforts to attempt to do so — the US continues to pose the greatest danger to peace, stability, prosperity, and human progress on Earth today
While the video discusses plans by the US to invest in shipbuilding through expanding the workforce with training programs, improve worker retention, and through the use of new technology to produce more with less, and even plans to have US proxies build ships for the US — no plans were announced to address the systemic problems creating this disparity in shipbuilding capacity in the first place.The problems stymying US shipbuilding (and all other productive industries in the US) are problems no amount of investment or technology can solve until the root causes themselves are addressed.
US-China Shipbuilding Gap is a Symptom of Bigger Problems
The atrophy of US shipbuilding has not taken place in a vacuum or overnight.
It has been in decline alongside all other major productive American industries and for generally the same reasons. The US has spent decades prioritizing shareholder primacy (the pursuit of perpetually expanding profits) at the expense of all other considerations — including industrial capacity, national infrastructure, American education, and the workforce the US educational system is tasked with creating.
The US — in pursuit of perpetual profits — has reorganized its economy from a global industrial leader, to a financialized Ponzi-economy building wealth across ledgers rather than upon factory floors.
The US educational system reflects this reprioritization — not only in redirecting students from productive vocations to better serve the Ponzi-economy — but also in the form of maximizing profits to access the education system itself. This has been done through expanding privatization across primary and secondary education, and across all forms of higher education. Young adults find themselves faced with tens of thousands of US dollars in debt before starting their first step in any chosen career.
This has created not only a critical shortage of workers for the US industrial base, it has created a systemic obstacle that must be removed before that critical shortage of workers can even be addressed. Reforming US education alone, is a process that could take a generation to solve.
An atrophied workforce is only one of several systemic problems the US faces. The other takes the shape of national infrastructure, including transportation, energy production and distribution, and the very facilities at which shipbuilding and other forms of industrial activity take place.
Because the US functions as a for-profit system where the “private sector” is responsible for all of the above — and because profits are always easier to make through financialization and/or legacy industrial processes (making money by doing or selling the same thing over and over again) — the chances of the “private sector” investing in the infrastructure and facilities required to even expand US shipbuilding significantly, let alone meaningfully close the gap with China, are next to non-existent.
Shortcuts have been proposed, including private and government-funded training programs to rapidly expand the pool of qualified workers for jobs across the US military industrial complex, and specifically in the realm of shipbuilding.
But even with the proposed training programs to expand the US workforce — another systemic problem exists preventing the efficient use of this workforce. The cost of training and retaining American workers will always be astronomically more expensive than in China precisely because of the for-profit financialized nature of the US Ponzi-economy in all aspects beyond (including directly upstream from) shipbuilding.
In the United States, any particular American labourer requires a wage capable of paying for the exorbitant cost-of-living in the US, including not only their own education/training, but also their rent, food, utilities, transportation, and healthcare. Even with healthcare provided by the shipbuilding industry — the corporations themselves must pay astronomically higher costs for that healthcare than in China.
This is because — in addition to the shipbuilding sector itself attempting to maximize profit in exchange for minimal effort or purpose — the US workforce is preyed upon by similar profit-maximization across all other sectors of US economic activity. The pharmaceutical industry alone uses US tax-funded research and development to produce medication — then charges many times its production costs for access to it.
China’s government does vastly better in subordinating pharmaceutical production to national interests — rather than the other way around as it functions in the US. This means that regardless of whether a company, an insurance policy, or an individual patient in China is paying the costs for healthcare, it will always be cheaper overall than in the United States.
This example applied across other costs of living — whether it is food, electricity, Internet access, or rent — plays out in a similar way. Chinese workers consistently enjoy cheaper prices, accessible services, and better infrastructure because the Chinese government places the purpose of production and the livelihood of those involved above the maximization of profits. This means China’s private sector, state-owned enterprises, and combinations of the two are free to pursue profit maximization as long as it doesn’t undermine collective national interests including the welfare of the Chinese population.
The US system, when compared to China’s, could be best equated to a troop of chimpanzees stripping bare fruit trees across the forest they live in (and taking that of other nearby troops) versus farmland carefully and sustainably cultivated by a family of farmers. Both approaches ultimately satisfy hunger. Only one approach does so reliably and sustainably by emphasizing long-term planning over short-sighted and immediate satisfaction.
Beyond a more humane economic and political system, China’s is also a more efficient system. The maximization of profits not only comes at the cost of the vast majority of any population within a system doing so — it also comes at the cost of any other objective besides maximizing profits — including the quality of and accessibility to services, and the quality and quantities of manufactured goods — in this case — ships.
The Chinese government’s overall approach to economics and governance ensures sound fundamentals in terms of infrastructure and workforce, but also ensures that the shipbuilding process in China itself serves the purpose of actually making ships to serve specific national priorities — both in the realm of commercial commerce and national defense — in addition to simply making money (which they also do).
In order for the United States to even meaningfully close the gap with China — it would need to address all of these systemic problems plaguing its shipbuilding industry and all the upstream economic activity that makes shipbuilding possible — including cost of living for workers, supply chains, and the infrastructure facilitating both.
If the US Cannot Compete, it Will Try to Delete
Even if the US were to shift over to an entirely purpose-driven socioeconomic model — it would still fall far short of matching Chinese shipbuilding solely because of the disparity in scale between the US and China. China’s population is vastly larger, as is its overall industrial base, education system, and its national infrastructure.
Because of the US’ inability to outcompete directly with China and other productive nations around the globe — it will increasingly seek the use of asymmetric methods of undermining and disrupting productive forces.
This includes the US’ current regional war in West Asia — targeting Iran and its allies — Hezbollah in Lebanon and Ansarallah in Yemen, but also the targeting of supposed US “allies” like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Kuwait whose energy production and exports have been likewise targeted and disrupted amid the ongoing US aggression.
The disruption of energy exports from West Asia to the rest of Asia — including China — is meant to undermine and roll back Chinese industrial production and economic prosperity as a substitute for the US’ inability to compete with China directly.
The US has recently begun striking at data centers across Russia — the opening shots in a planned global asymmetric strategy to stop multipolar artificial intelligence development from permanently surpassing the US in the same manner production, military, and other technological capabilities have begun to do.
The US is also increasingly threatening waterways worldwide — both directly and by proxy — through a combination of outright wars and associated blockades, the seizure of ships “sanctioned” by the US and its European proxies, and the use of maritime drones (attributed to US proxies like Ukraine) to physically strike at and attempt to destroy the shipping of targeted nations. While it is primarily Russian shipping being targeted now — Chinese shipping has been affected with the likelihood of wider and more deliberate targeting expanding in the near future.
Together with the US effectively banning Chinese-built ships from US ports through targeted fees and the likelihood the US will force its proxies worldwide to follow suit — the US is attempting to target Chinese industry, including shipbuilding, from a multitude of economic, political, administrative, and military vectors.
Beyond these methods — the US continues political interference worldwide, in attempt to both disrupt global peace and stability and thus economic progress among the multipolar world, but also to politically capture targeted nations and transform them into proxies the US can use as armed and dangerous geopolitical “battering rams” against nations like China as the US has done with Ukraine and Georgia (from 2003-2008) vis-à-vis Russia, and the Philippines and the island province of Taiwan the US is using against the rest of China.
The combination of these approaches constitutes a multidomain war on multipolarism — which is both an admission of the failure of US power and primacy, but still an existential threat to global peace, stability, prosperity, and human progress.
In the realm of shipbuilding in particular, the US seeks to use the industrial capacity of nations like South Korea and Japan to compensate for its own failing industrial base, attempting to both boost America’s ability to put to sea additional warships, but also maintain and repair those already at sea. Unfortunately, for the US — the combined shipbuilding capacity of itself and its proxies fails to amount to even half of China’s shipbuilding capacity alone.
The notion the US will leverage “new technologies” to more efficiently build, maintain, and repair ships fails to acknowledge the fact that China will just as easily use these “new technologies” to further enhance its current advantages over the US.
The only real means by which the US could close the gap in terms of shipbuilding vis-à-vis China would be to cripple or undermine China’s industrial base, and by doing so, its shipbuilding capacity — precisely through targeting the energy empowering China’s industry as well as the economic prosperity underpinning China’s national policies including continued improvement of and investment in its industrial base (including shipyards).
In other words, if the US cannot outcompete China, nor attack China’s industrial base directly, it seeks to asymmetrically target the global factors China’s growing economic might be being built on — energy and trade — both of which require peace and stability to thrive.
Only through asymmetrically sabotaging China’s ability to outproduce the US can the US ever hope to narrow the gap in shipbuilding or any other of a vast and growing number of metrics in which China matches or has far surpassed the US in.
The fear in Washington continues to be that even if the collective remaining power of the US is fully and radically leveraged toward this asymmetrical aggression — it might not only not be enough — it could supercharge China’s efforts to both overcome this asymmetrical aggression — and also collectively unite an increasingly multipolar world in purpose against the US’ pursuit of unwarranted global power.
Shipbuilding is only one of several metrics in which China has seemingly irreversibly surpassed the US. The fact the US continues seeking the means to reassert its primacy worldwide, especially against China, is not evidence necessarily that the US can succeed — but that through its efforts to attempt to do so — the US continues to pose the greatest danger to peace, stability, prosperity, and human progress on Earth today.
Not only does China and other productive forces on Earth today need to prevent the US from successfully reasserting unipolar primacy over the planet, it must also successfully prevent the US from destroying the planet in a failed effort to do so.
Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.
https://journal-neo.su/2026/10/17/why-the-us-can-never-match-chinese-shipbuilding/
unite an increasingly multipolar world in purpose against the US’ pursuit of unwarranted global power
“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.” ~ Lewis Carroll
“Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” ~ Lewis Carroll
@Michael Reid: Chinese troops did directly attack American troops during the Korean war. I was not yet born, but my Dad was a USMC Lieutenant at a forward artillery base which could have been overrun, in which case I would not be typing this.
Yeah, it was a horrible mess and the US should not have been there, and so on…And yes, absolutely, neoliberalism parasitized the productive US economy as a global Ponzi scheme since Paul Volcker ;-(
@TBOC: I had a week to memorize a 2 minute poem for Englich class in 5th grade. I didn’t do it. 30 min before class I memorized Jabberwocky, which was almost 2 minutes, but I recited it with some enthusiasm and got full points.
I still mostly remember it, like the theme song to Gilligan’s Island…Trump is setting in motion a series of events to invalidate and coerce the outcome of the midterms. If he succeeds, the iron doors of fascism will slam shut.
From France to Albania, and Oslo to Moscow: a New Architecture Is Required
Stewart Battle
By Stewart BattlePublished Oct 22, 2026
Updated Oct 23, 2026 · 3 min read
From France to Albania, and Oslo to Moscow: a New Architecture Is Required
In opposition to a New Architecture, dozens of Israeli fighter jets flew over 800 miles to the Iranian border on Oct. 19 in an overt provocation clearly aimed at restarting the war. Credit: Israeli Defence Forces Spokesperson’s UnitSave
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From France to Albania, and Oslo to Moscow: a New Architecture Is Required3 min read
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When Berlin youth protested the proposed military conscription in Germany earlier this month, one prominent banner had the message: “The rich want war; the youth want a future!” As of January 2026, all German 18-year-olds began receiving questionnaires in the mail about joining the armed forces—to which all males are required to respond. The Chancellor from BlackRock—Friedrich Merz—wants to make Germany home to the largest army in Europe, even as his country suffers from unprecedented price inflation, corporate shutdowns, and economic depression. In a case like this, when reality pushes dogma and opportunism against the wall, what is possible begins to change.Similarly, in France, despite efforts to dilute the massive protests with agitators and violent provocateurs, the largely peaceful demonstrations are pointing out the collapsing standards of living and emphasizing the same point: Youth want a future. Now, as France’s bond yields rise and international investors label the country as “risky,” financial gurus in the City of London are demanding that France impose harsh austerity on its population. It has now come out that French Minister of Economics Roland Lescure traveled to London earlier this month “to reassure City investors about France’s financial trajectory,” according to Le Monde. To appease London, the government has proposed a belt-tightening budget for 2027 that aims to cut back on social spending, even though it, too, is engaged in a massive rearmament campaign to allegedly confront Russia. The problem is that, not only will social austerity not work to address the real economic problems of France, but it is exactly the reason why youth protests are currently sweeping the continent!
Meanwhile, more and larger protests continue to spread across Europe. The political, moral, and literal bankruptcy of its ruling elites could not be more apparent.
A similar bankruptcy is taking place with regard to the war policies in the West. It has been widely reported that the U.S. and Israel are preparing a new military campaign against Iran, with reports in the Financial Times and New York Times over the recent days warning of such plans. In addition, Axios and Israel’s Channel 12 reported that dozens of Israeli fighter jets flew over 800 miles to the Iranian border on Oct. 19 in an overt provocation clearly aimed at restarting the war. President Trump himself has repeatedly warned that he will restart hostilities against Iran after the midterm elections next month, despite how disastrous the war has already been for the global economy and the U.S.’ international reputation. Rather than create peace, if this policy is continued, it will have disastrous consequences for this region and the whole world.
In moments such as this, where the absurdity of ruling opinion is so atrocious, don’t be desperate or discouraged—be a force for the truth. It is at periods where the reigning assumptions are failing the most miserably that society is most receptive to new, more truthful ones, and the urgent necessity of a new security and development architecture becomes obvious.
U.S. independent presidential candidate Diane Sare displayed an example of this type of moral courage in a statement released Oct. 22 on the topic of the upcoming Brazilian elections. “It was never the intention of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, or John Quincy Adams that the United States would become a global hegemon,” Sare writes. “Our mission as a republic is to demonstrate through the goodness of our deeds, and the happiness and prosperity of our people, the wisdom of a government founded on the principle of ‘the consent of the governed.’”
In this context, Sare points out the importance of electing President Lula da Silva in this weekend’s election. “President Lula da Silva was one of the founding members of the Brazil, Russia, India, China partnership (later BRICS) during his earlier presidency in 2006 and 2009, so it is clear that he is dedicated to the principle that nations with very different histories can collaborate for the mutual benefit of mankind, without sacrificing their sovereignty. Brazil, under the leadership of Lula da Silva, would be a natural partner of a United States in seeking to resolve conflicts and work together toward projects of mutual benefit for the human race.”
Creating these types of “projects of mutual benefit for the human race” is central in the creation of a new architecture to replace today’s dying neocolonial paradigm, and will be taken up in the Friday meeting of the International Peace Coalition. Tune in and be a part of the effort.
I had to try to find an update of who is running the world
The Super-Entity That Owns the World
By Eric Buesing
Global Research, October 22, 2026
51 Notes, References
https://www.globalresearch.ca/super-entity-owns-world/5944273
———–
Eric Daniel Buesing is an independent researcher and the author of
The Hidden Hand: Wealth, Power, and Control from Pharaohs to Corporations(TrineDay, 2026)
and
The Illusion Architects: How Elites Shape Culture, Consciousness, and Reality (TrineDay, 2027).
For 22 years he has studied elite power structures, mapping the architectures of influence that govern societies, economies, and global institutions, work that builds on the foundations laid by Carroll Quigley and Antony Sutton.
———-Copilot Search
Research from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) shows that a tightly connected “super‑entity” of 147 multinational corporations—mostly financial institutions such as Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs—collectively controls about 40% of global corporate wealth, with a broader group of 737 firms controlling up to 80%.
Overview
The idea of a “super‑entity that owns the world” comes from a 2011 network analysis by ETH Zurich researchers. They examined ownership links among 43,060 transnational corporations and found an unusually dense core of interconnected firms dominating global corporate control.
————–
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_ChossudovskyMichel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky (born September 8[1] 1946) is a Canadian economist and author. He is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Ottawa[2][3] and the president and director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which runs the website globalresearch.ca, founded in 2001, which publishes falsehoods and conspiracy theories.[4][5][6] Chossudovsky has promoted conspiracy theories about 9/11.[7][8][11][12]In 2017, the Centre for Research on Globalization was accused by information warfare specialists at NATO’s Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (STRATCOM) of playing a key role in the spread of pro-Russian propaganda.[13] A report by the U.S. State Department in August 2020 accused the website of being a proxy for a Russian disinformation campaign.[14]
By the estimation of report’s authors, it has accumulated 12.4 million page views, with around 351,247 readers for each article.
33 References
————-
Michel Chossudovsky
https://michelchossudovsky.substack.com/p/super-entity-owns-world
The Super-Entity That Owns the World
An analysis by Eric Buesing
Michel Chossudovsky
17 hours ago—————-
Claude prepared a reportUpdates to the 2011 ETH Zurich “Super-Entity” Study
Prepared October 23, 2026, in response to Eric Buesing’s article “The Super-Entity That Owns the World” (Global Research, October 22, 2026)Summary
The original paper (Vitali, Glattfelder & Battiston, PLoS ONE 2011) used Orbis 2007 data. I found no official update or revision of it by the original authors, and I did not see a correction notice, though I did not search specifically for one. The same question has since been asked with newer data by other research groups. The 2011 paper’s central finding still holds: control is concentrated in a small, tightly linked core. The follow-ups suggest the core now looks different, with passive asset managers and states in place of 2007’s banks. They also treat the claim that the core actually coordinates or exercises control as unproven.Peer-reviewed follow-ups
1. Mizuno, Doi & Kurizaki (PLoS ONE 2020 and 2023)
The closest thing to a direct successor. The 2023 paper uses Orbis data from December 2020, covering about 7 million ultimate owners and 16 million shareholders.
• 2023 paper: htt ps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290229
• 2020 companion paper: htt ps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237862
Findings that both support and complicate the super-entity story:
• BlackRock and Vanguard rank at the top among financial institutions. Setting aside the Chinese state entities, they are effectively the second-largest players in the global ownership network.
• Governments rank higher still. The Chinese government’s aggregate influence score is more than double BlackRock’s, and Norway and Russia also appear among the top 15.
• The authors say earlier claims about financial institutions’ dominance look overstated once governments are counted.
• Having the capacity for control does not mean it is used. The authors note that holding power does not necessarily imply shareholders can or do exercise it.2. Fichtner, Heemskerk & Garcia-Bernardo, “Hidden Power of the Big Three?” (Business and Politics, 2017)
Documents the rise of passive index funds and the re-concentration of corporate ownership: htt ps://doi.org/10.1017/bap.2017.6
Note: I know this paper only through its citation in the 2023 paper above, not by reading it.3. Garcia-Bernardo et al., “Uncovering Offshore Financial Centers” (Scientific Reports, 2017)
Uses Orbis data from 2015 covering about 98 million companies and 71 million ownership relationships. It reuses the Vitali method and finds that offshore financial centers act as conduits and sinks in the global network. Preprint: htt ps://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.03016
4. Krause, Peixoto & Bornholdt, “Spontaneous centralization of control in a network of company ownerships” (arXiv)
Shows that a simple model can reproduce the core-periphery structure. The authors say this suggests deliberate strategizing may not be the dominant driver of centralization. I did not confirm journal publication. Preprint: htt ps://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.3422
What changed since 2007
• The list of top holders has shifted. The 2007 financial firms (Barclays, Merrill Lynch, Lehman) have been merged away or collapsed. BlackRock and Vanguard now lead.
• Governments, especially China’s, matter more than the 2011 study could show.
• Data quality is still a problem. Orbis coverage is incomplete, and the 2023 authors flag this as a key limit. The 2011 study has the same weakness.
• Definitions of “control” differ between studies, so exact figures such as 147 firms and 40% are not directly comparable across papers.
Caveats from the original coverage
• Yaneer Bar-Yam (NECSI) warned in New Scientist that the analysis assumes ownership equates to control, which is not always true.
• The authors did not claim a conspiracy. They noted there is no example of the core intentionally acting as a bloc, though top holders are positioned to exert considerable control. Glattfelder said global antitrust rules may be needed.
• The 40% figure refers to control over the operating revenue of the 43,060 transnational corporations in the sample, not 40% of all global wealth.
Related 2026 developments covered earlier
• Corporate Transparency Act: FinCEN’s final rule (issued August 11, 2026, effective August 14) permanently exempts domestic companies from beneficial ownership reporting. Customer Due Diligence duties on financial institutions remain, and state laws such as New York’s LLC Transparency Act are not preempted.
• GAO-26-107967 (May 29, 2026): found the exemption covers over 99 percent of previously covered entities and may perpetuate illicit-finance risks. https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-26-107967
• Pass-through voting: Vanguard is adding its flagship 500 Index Fund and S&P 500 ETF to its Investor Choice program in 2026, and BlackRock runs a Voting Choice program.
Core sources
• Vitali, Glattfelder & Battiston (2011): htt ps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0025995
• Preprint with supporting tables: htt ps://arxiv.org/pdf/1107.5728
• New Scientist feature (Oct 19, 2011): htt ps://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354-500-revealed-the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world/
• Bebchuk & Hirst, “The Specter of the Giant Three”: htt ps://www.ecgi.global/publications/working-papers/the-specter-of-the-giant-three
• Gilens & Page (2014): htt ps://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592714001595
• Findley, Nielson & Sharman, “Global Shell Games”: htt ps://thefactcoalition.org/report/global-shell-games-testing-money-launderers-terrorist-financiers-access-shell-companies/
• Buesing article (Substack copy): htt ps://michelchossudovsky.substack.com/p/super-entity-owns-world
Suggested next stepLook for research testing whether index-fund voting actually changes company decisions. That bears directly on the article’s claim about hidden power.
———–Trump’s Iranian Body Count Grows on Its Own While He Ignores What Israel Has Done in Gaza
By Larry C. Johnson on 22 October 2026Donald Trump has discovered a remarkable statistical phenomenon. In Iran, the dead multiply on their own, unassisted, between speeches. You don’t need a morgue, a name, a death certificate or a human rights group. You need a microphone and a rally.
Let me walk you through it, because the trend line is breathtaking.
The Trump Iran Index
In mid-January, while the Iranian regime was crushing protests in the streets, the President offered no number at all. He said he had been told “on good authority” that the killing had stopped and the planned executions were off. Fine. Then the counting began.On February 20, at a White House press briefing called to complain about the Supreme Court striking down his tariffs, Trump announced that Iran had killed 32,000 protesters. CBS News noted, politely, that he “did not offer a source.”
By mid-April, in the middle of his public spat with Pope Leo, the figure on Truth Social had become “at least 42,000 innocent, completely unarmed, protesters in the last two months.” Ten thousand more dead in eight weeks, with no new massacre to explain them.
On June 16, sitting with the Emir of Qatar, it was still 42,000. The number rested for the summer.
Then on August 31, Truth Social again: “now over 100,000 people dead.” The toll had more than doubled since June. Where did the other 58,000 come from? No one asked, and no one was told.
And on October 19, at a rally in Kansas, the President declared that “in the last eight months, they’ve killed 75,000 minimum protesters.” So in seven weeks, 25,000 dead Iranians came back to life. It is the first resurrection on record to be announced at a campaign rally.
Thirty-two thousand. Forty-two thousand. One hundred thousand. Seventy-five thousand. That is not a death toll. It is a stock chart for a meme coin.
What the people who actually count say
Before anyone accuses me of whitewashing Tehran, let me tell you what the President leaves out. January’s unrest was not simply a spontaneous uprising of unarmed citizens. It was an attempted color revolution, and Western intelligence had its fingerprints all over it. In my assessment, the CIA and Mossad were actively involved in recruiting protesters and getting weapons into their hands, and those weapons were turned on Iranian government forces. The Israelis barely bothered to hide their role. Mossad’s own Persian-language account told the protesters, “We are with you — not just from afar and in words.” On January 3, former CIA director Mike Pompeo publicly alluded to Mossad operating alongside them. Israeli press reports claimed outside actors were arming dissidents.The casualty records reflect that this was a fight, not an unprovoked massacre. HRANA, the U.S.-based Iranian human rights group that no one mistakes for a friend of the Islamic Republic, has verified the deaths of 178 members of Iran’s police, Revolutionary Guard and Basij. Tehran’s own count of 3,117 dead classifies roughly 670 of them as armed “terrorists.” Governments do not lose nearly two hundred security personnel to peaceful sit-ins.
None of that means no innocent people died. They did, and the people who sent guns into crowds share the blame for it. But it means the honest tallies are far lower than anything Trump says. HRANA claims 7,007 deaths by late February, with nearly 12,000 more cases under review. Iran Human Rights counted 3,428. The highest figure anyone has floated, from the UN Special Rapporteur in January, was that the toll might pass 20,000. Those counts are built from names, dates and places, and they cover a few days in January, not the “eight months” Trump now describes. The President’s 75,000 is nearly four times the most extreme estimate on record and more than ten times what has been verified. He is not counting the dead. He is counting the votes he thinks the dead can get him, and he never mentions who armed the crowds.
Meanwhile, in Gaza
Now let’s look at a place where the dead do get counted, one by one.As of October 13, Gaza’s health authorities report 74,389 Palestinians killed and 175,423 wounded since October 7, 2023. Since the October 2025 ceasefire that was supposed to end the killing, another 1,498 have been killed.
For two years, Washington and Jerusalem told us not to trust those figures, because they came from the “Hamas-run health ministry.” Then, in January of this year, the Israel Defense Forces accepted them. The IDF said that approximately 70,000 Gazans had been killed in the war. That is not a Hamas talking point. That is the army that did the killing, checking the books and agreeing with the total.
The IDF also says roughly 25,000 of the dead were Hamas fighters. Take that at face value, which is generous, and do the subtraction the IDF itself has declined to do in public. That leaves about 45,000 people who were not combatants by Israel’s own reckoning. Forty-five thousand. Using Israel’s numbers, not Hamas’s, not the UN’s, not mine.
So here is the comparison. In Iran, the President offers numbers with no source, no names and no consistency, which swell by tens of thousands between appearances and then shrink when he forgets what he said last time. In Gaza, there is a documented, name-by-name count that the Israeli military itself has accepted, and which by Israel’s own math includes tens of thousands of non-combatants.
Guess which one the President talks about at his rallies.
The double standard isn’t subtle
I spent years in government watching officials pick which dead to count. It’s an old trick. You inflate the victims of your enemies and you erase the victims of your friends, and you never mention your own role in creating either. Iranian protesters are useful, because their deaths justify a war Washington has already started, even when Washington helped put the guns in their hands. Palestinians are inconvenient, because their deaths were caused with American bombs and paid for with American money.If the President truly believed every innocent life lost to state violence demanded a response, he would not need to inflate Iran’s toll, and he would ask who armed the crowds. And he would not need an Israeli general to tell him what happened in Gaza. The figure is already there, accepted by the IDF, sitting on a desk in his own government.
Instead we get an Iranian body count that rises and falls like a carnival game, and a Gaza body count he pretends not to see. Somewhere in Kansas, a crowd cheered for 75,000 dead Iranians who, by the President’s own record, were 100,000 just seven weeks ago. Nobody in that crowd was told that 70,000 Palestinians are dead, and that the IDF agrees. That isn’t a mistake. That’s the point.
Nima and I discuss the likelihood of a decapitation strike on Iran:
Play
Danny Haiphong hosted me and Colonel Wilkerson… Iran is the topic:
Play
My second interview with Mohamed Suleman of the TMJ News Network:
Play
Doing my usual Thursday afternoon with Garland Nixon:
Play
Brandon Weichart and I discuss the Ansar Allah offensive against Saudi Arabia:
Play
I discuss the likelihood that Trump will break another promise and hit Iran before the midterms:
Play
The Zionist agenda of Greater Israel marches on. Netanyahu says Hezbollah’s fall will follow Iran’s as the Middle East is cleared of Muslims.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the closure of the entire West Bank in response, according to a statement. The IDF also launched what it described as a counterterrorism operation in Hebron and surrounding villages.
————-
————-Exhausted By War https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/exhausted-by-war
Trilateral peace talks with Russia, Ukraine and the US should start up in 3-4 weeks, after Israeli and US midterm elections, and likely another concerted attack on Iran, and after Russia pounds the electrical, transportation, fuel, military and storage infrastructure of Ukraine for another month, ahead of winter. Ukrainians are fleeing their cities to take refuge in EU countries. Russian advances on the ground are accellerating in both the north and the south of Ukraine.
EU countries face a winter of heating and electrical generation fuel shortages, and potentially crippling diesel shortages, which will depend upon developments in both current wars. European countries are already subject to rioting and higher interest rates on bonded debt as all of their costs rise and real economies shrivel from high fuel and feedstock expenses and low availability. Richard Cook (excerpt) Monetary Reform for the 2028 Election: Monetary Wars Begin in the US: 1795-1832. Part 1.4
Fortunately for the nation, President John Adams, nominally a Federalist but also an ardent patriot and distrustful of banks and debt, made peace with Napoleon after a period of naval skirmishes called the “Quasi-War,” so that Hamilton’s desired war against France never took place.
Instead, a dozen years later, Jefferson’s successor, President James Madison, fought a short but violent conflict with Great Britain that ended with the Capitol and White House being burnt by British troops but also with General Andrew Jackson’s stunning victory over British regulars at New Orleans after the peace treaty had already been signed on the basis of status quo ante bellum.
The War of 1812 also saw the last attempt by the U.S. to conquer Canada at the Battle of Lundy’s Lane. The U.S. had previously failed to take over Canada during the Revolutionary War. From now on, the U.S. would be sharing North America with an aggressive Great Britain growing in power. The head of the Canadian state was, and would remain until today, the British monarch.
Returning to Thomas Jefferson’s electoral victory in 1800, Hamilton said what he had always believed: that the Constitution was a “frail and worthless fabric.” (Age of Jackson,p. 15) Jefferson’s fiscal policy, implemented by Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin (served 1801-1814), was to slash government expenditures, reduce reliance on the financiers who ran the First Bank, and diminish the Bank’s role in the growing US. economy.
Jefferson and Gallatin cut military spending nearly in half, eliminated excise taxes, and abolished “unnecessary offices.” The resulting budget surplus, combined with tariff revenues from a growing economy, was directed at paying down the federal debt. The Jeffersonians also understood that the federal government didn’t need to borrow money to spend on promoting manufactures, because the expanding private sector was doing that on its own.
Rather than continuing to run up the debt to ensure support of the government by the financial elite, the Jeffersonians did the opposite. Countering Hamilton, they saw the financial aristocracy, whose wealth lay in pieces of paper of artificially inflated worth, as the greatest threat possible to both agricultural and, as time went on, manufacturing value derived from honest skilled labor. They also understood that the best way to defeat the Money Power was to make peace, not war.
The Money Power always viewed war as their pathway to control, and continue to do so today. “Endless war” might well be their motto, with any competing power subject to attack under whatever pretext is convenient. https://www.globalresearch.ca/monetary-reform-2028-election-monetary-wars-begin-us-1795-1832-part-1-4/5944123The Super-Entity That Owns the World , An analysis by Eric Buesing https://michelchossudovsky.substack.com/p/super-entity-owns-world
Voters More Worried About Iran War Than Immigration Or Crime: Polls https://www.zerohedge.com/political/voters-more-worried-about-iran-war-immigration-or-crime-polls
Plurality of active-duty service members oppose Iran war: poll – Veteran-led, progressive advocacy group finds that 49% of people currently serving in the military, veterans, and family members oppose military being used in Operation Epic Fury
Though Republicans surveyed in the poll backed Operation Epic Fury at a rate of 77% to 16%, overwhelming opposition among Democrats and independents left respondents opposed to the war overall, 49% to 44%. Veterans were by far the most supportive of the ongoing conflict, with 53% in support and 44% opposing, while active-duty service members opposed it by a 16-point margin and military families by 38 points. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/military-poll-iran-war/ Naked Capitalism, Iran War: Iran Believes Attack Imminent as Netanyahu Reported to Persuade Trump to Launch Before Midterms
Many of the commentators following the epically stupid Iran war, which has revived the Saudi-Ansar Allah conflict, exhibit frustration and gloom at what looks to be a new and potentially culminating round in a disastrous game of chicken. Netanyahu is reportedly amping up Trump to pound Iran again, sooner rather than post-midterms, although we’ll see if those rumors are accurate. But Iran appears to believe them, or at least see danger in not believing them. From the Hormuz Report on Twitter:
BREAKING: Iranian officials now believe a joint U.S.-Israeli attack is imminent and instructing the country’s armed forces to directly activate the decentralized “Mosaic Defense” doctrine, with commanders reportedly receiving extensive lists of U.S. economic and political targets to strike if war erupts, per Fars News.
A senior Iranian security official warned that U.S. political assets and infrastructure in countries participating in the conflict could be directly targeted. The doctrine disperses military command across 31 provincial commands, designed to allow Iran to continue fighting even if its central leadership is attacked. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/10/iran-war-iran-believes-attack-imminent-as-netanyahu-reported-to-persuade-trump-to-launch-before-midterms-global-stocks-fall-as-oil-price-increases-continue.htmlVance Blindsided By Grieving Military Husband Who Blasts ‘Fundamental Failures’ Of Iran War https://www.zerohedge.com/military/vance-blindsided-grieving-military-husband-who-blasts-fundamental-failures-iran-war
US evacuating Middle East bases as Trump weighs new Iran strikes – NBC
The Pentagon and State Department reportedly made similar preparations before launching the war against Iran in February https://web.archive.org/web/20261022040355/https://rt-english.com/news/647505-us-relocating-troops-diplomats/Gilbert Doctorow on the Ukraine War, The war’s end game explained
The present actions of the U.S. President and the response of his Russian counterpart must be set against what happened in the opening weeks of Trump’s second term, when he briefly suspended provision of U.S. intelligence to Kiev and otherwise showed a predisposition strongly favoring Russia over Ukraine…
..Vladimir Putin was not listening then. He continued his war of attrition, his gently, gently approach to conduct of the war. And that remained the Russian course until six weeks before the Duma elections when, for a variety of reasons, the Kremlin leadership changed course to massive destruction of Ukraine, to beat them into submission by missile and drone attacks that are rendering Kiev and other Ukrainian cities uninhabitable and forcing the urban population to flee the country.
On the one hand, the Kremlin saw that it was heading for electoral defeat if it did not respons to the broadly popular demands to end the war here and now by destroying Ukraine. On the other hand, serious damage to 40% of Russia’s refining capacity and broader infrastructure destruction from drones supplied by Britain and other Western countries and launched from Ukraine, was no longer tolerable and had to be stopped at all costs.
The results of the Russian daily attacks are there now to see: multi-kilometer long lines of cars at the Western frontiers of Ukraine seeking passage into Western Europe, where their arrival will strengthen the hand of the Rightist, anti-immigrant and pro-Russian parties, causing political mayhem and weakening EU resolve to continue aiding Ukraine.
Donald Trump’s ‘deal’ with Vladimir Putin over diesel fuel has been widely misunderstood. Yes, the price of diesel dropped by 5% yesterday in response to news that Moscow is now sending a couple of tankers of diesel to the USA today. But Trump knows full well that the Russian deal will not change the electoral trends against him for the upcoming midterms. The sense in the deal was to give positive proof to Putin that there is a broad rapprochement coming. It was to embarrass the EU over its pigheaded refusal to reconsider its ban on Russian hydrocarbons.
Trump has possibly understood that in the midterm elections he will lose control of one and possibly two houses of Congress. But even if the worst case he still has until January 1st to exercise his powers over foreign policy and to change the world order in the direction he seeks, which means an accommodation with Russia and China hammered out in a Yalta-2 arrangement.. The forthcoming meeting of all 3 leaders in China may be the opportunity to do that, And in the meantime he will continue to apply maximum pressure on Kiev to kneel, kiss the ring and sign a peace that will be largely favorable to Russia. https://gilbertdoctorow.substack.com/p/the-wars-end-game-explained
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